


Light Fixtures

by moemachina



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Bad Romance, F/M, Home Repair, Pre-Canon, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 22:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4322325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>March 2009: Yukari and Akihiko replace some light bulbs in the House That Death Built.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light Fixtures

**Author's Note:**

> In my head, this is the start of a ongoing series about Persona 3 and Home Repair. Bob Vila would be proud.

It was raining outside, a heavy, silent rain that pressed up against the windows as if it were smoke. The room inside was dark -- in part because they had started unscrewing all the light bulbs in the room. 

"Maybe we should have done this yesterday," Yukari said. "It was sunny yesterday."

Akihiko gave a near-laugh that sounded like a cough. "At least we weren't planning to beat any rugs today."

"Do we _have_ any rugs? It's all this...weird shag carpeting. That looks terrible." 

"Upstairs," Akihiko said. "Rolled up in a closet." 

"Really?"

"Mitsuru and I found them last week. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but you may change your mind about the carpet once you see the rugs." He was kneeling by a cardboard box, sorting through its motley collection of metal brackets and assorted hardware. From where she stood, looking down at the tanned nape of his neck, Yukari could see that he needed a haircut. 

Yukari was barefoot, because it had started raining when she was still walking from school to this once-and-future-dorm, and she had not been carrying an umbrella. Now her sneakers and polka-dotted socks were drying in a puddle by the back door. Beneath her toes, the ugly shag carpet felt dusty and warm. 

Outside, the last of the winter snow was melting under the rain. 

"Ah, yes," Akihiko said, making another dry noise in his throat. "Here it is. Why do we have three hammers but only one screwdriver?" 

"To teach us to think...outside the box?" 

"Probably," Ahihiko said absently, and she could tell that he had not been paying attention to her words. He stood up, and Yukari found herself suddenly short again, now that she was at eye-level with his shoulder. "Come on, let's get the ladder." 

The metal ladder by the door looked as if it had been in battle on the losing side. They regarded it mutely for a moment, and from the corner of her eye, Yukari could see Akihiko's entire thought process just in the way that he shifted his weight. 

"Well, one of us needs to steady the ladder..." 

"You can do that, champ," Yukari said cheerfully. "I'll climb up."

"We'll take turns," Akihiko said. 

"Fine," Yukari said. 

Yukari was wearing a pair of old jeans, and the frayed ends brushed against her heels as she carefully stepped up three rough metal rungs. Akihiko held the other side of the ladder, and it did not shift even a little. 

"I'm surprised," Yukari said, looking down at Akihiko, "that Mitsuru doesn't just have someone from her father's company come and handle all these things. I mean, she's loaded, right? She could just snap her fingers and have this entire dorm ready, right?"

Akihiko hesitated. "Well," he said, "I think Mitsuru prefers...not to rely on those sorts of things. She likes being self-sufficient." 

_So self-sufficient that she makes us do all the legwork,_ Yukari thought, but she did not say it. She knew that Akihiko would defend Mitsuru if Yukari bitched about her. She knew that they were close. 

"Besides," Akihiko said meditatively, "I think Mitsuru liked the idea of us being responsible for our new home. I think she thought it would make it feel more _like_ a home if we were responsible for it." 

And Yukari could not help but think: _And it's not like any of us would know what a home feels like._

Except for Mitsuru, of course. 

The light fixture overhead was a bowl of frosted glass. Yukari inserted the head of the screwdriver at one corner and began to unscrew. Little bits of rust rained down on her, followed by the screw, which hit her on the nose before clanging down to the metal ladder beneath. 

"Don't worry about it," Akihiko said. "I'll get it."

The next three screws fell past her in quick succession, and with the last one -- "Careful," Akihiko said, unnecessarily -- the glass bowl overhead tilted and dropped against her sustaining hand. 

"Here, take the screwdriver," she said as she reached down blindly. 

Akihiko obliged. 

Yukari tenderly lowered the glass, dusty and dark, and peered into its interior, where the black corpses of tiny insects huddled in the center. 

"We'll have to wash it," he said.

"We'll have to disinfect it," she said. 

He shrugged. "Light bulb?"

Yukari reached up again and began unscrewing the long-dead bulb from its socket. She wondered, not for the first time, whether Akihiko thought that she was annoying. Or, if he did, whether she would even be able to tell. He was serious and somber and polite, and she barely knew him. He was ahead of her at school, and of course she had known who he was -- everybody knew Akihiko, he was the star athlete of Gekkoukan High, he was the subject of a dozen schoolgirl whispers, he probably figured in more than a few wet dreams -- but she hadn't _known_ him. They had never spoken, not in their prior lives, and if Yukari had looked at him occasionally from beneath lowered eyelashes, whenever he had hummingly swept by her in the halls -- that wasn't really knowledge. Not really. 

And now she was standing close enough to see the hair curling over the tops of his ears, close enough to hear his slightly raspy inhalation of breath -- he had a cold; he had apologized -- close enough to smell whatever boy-kind of deodorant he was wearing. It was vaguely cedar-y. It smelled nice. 

And now he knew something about her that nearly no one else knew. And she knew the same about him. It was almost intimate. It was almost like friendship. 

Almost. 

Outside, the last of the dirty winter snow was being washed away, and a tentative green was appearing on the tip of everything. 

Yukari handed the dead bulb down to Akihiko. As he carefully put it down on the ground, out of their way, she stared down at the top of his pale head. She suddenly knew -- with one of those weird, echo-y certainties that resonated in her bones -- how his hair would feel if she reached out to run her fingers through it. She knew its springy density and almost coarse texture. 

Akihiko straightened. "Here," he said. "It's one of those special light bulbs. They won't need to be changed for another decade." 

Yukari snorted. "And deprive future students of this fun?" She reached for the bulb -- and maybe it was the storm outside, or the faulty wiring in the house, or the fact that Yukari had been brushing her bare feet against the carpet for a while, or maybe it was something else, but as Yukari reached for the bulb, their hands brushed, and she received a shock. 

It seemed like a blinding light momentarily illuminated the room, and Yukari staggered back -- slipping off the third rung of the ladder and into empty air -- until an iron grip seized the waist of her jeans and pulled her back. Her elbow slammed into the sharp edge of the ladder's rail. 

"Jesus," she said. 

"Are you okay?" 

Yukari took a deep breath. "Yeah." She squinted down at him. "Thanks, but you can let me go now." 

In his hurry to seize her before she fell, he had grabbed onto the top of her jeans, and now the white knuckles of his right hand were flush against her hip bone. ( _And there's his fingertips_ , she thought, _and the edge of my polka-dot underwear and a fringe of pubic hair and and and_ ). 

He went pink and hastily withdrew his hand. "Sorry," he said. 

"Oh, it's not--"

"No, really, I _am_ sorry," he said again, and he looked up at her -- _really_ looked at her, for the first time all day.

She gave a shaky laugh. "No harm," she said, and she couldn't quite prevent the squeak in her voice. "Did that fancy light bulb make it?" 

Luckily, the ugly shag carpet had protected it when Yukari dropped it. This time, he handed it up without a word and she screwed it into the ceiling without incident. 

They moved on to the next light fixture. Akihiko climbed the ladder and Yukari steadied its base. 

"So," he said with studied carelessness as he began unscrewing the clouded glass bowl from the ceiling, "maybe you'll come out on the Dark Hour tonight." 

Outside, the rain was coming down harder and louder, banging against the windows insistently, hungrily. 

"Maybe," she said quietly.


End file.
